I looked up.
And saw Mia, still tied to the tree. Someone had pulled the tape from her mouth. Her face was streaked with tears and dirt. Her eyes were wide, fixed on me with an expression I couldn’t read.
She’d watched me. She’d watched all of it.
Then I saw Riley.
She was on the ground. Not standing. Not moving toward Mia. On the ground, one hand pressed to her shoulder—and even from here I could see the blood seeping through her fingers.
“Riley!”
I lunged toward her, but a deputy caught my arm. “Sir, we need you to stay back?—”
“That’s my wife.” I shook him off, dropping to my knees beside her. “Riley. Riley, look at me.”
Her face was pale, her jaw tight with pain, but her eyes were clear. Focused.
“I’m okay,” she said. Her voice came out strained. “It went through. Just the shoulder. I’m okay.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“It’s not bad.” She tried to sit up, winced, and let me ease her back down. “Mia. Is Mia?—”
“She’s okay. She’s right there.” I looked over my shoulder. A deputy was cutting Mia free from the ropes, another wrapping a blanket around her shaking shoulders. “She’s safe. You’re both safe.”
Riley’s hand found mine, her grip weak but insistent. Blood on her fingers. Blood on my knuckles. Both of us marked by this day.
“You came,” she said.
“Of course I came.”
Her eyes fluttered. The paramedics were pushing through now, shouting for space, and I had to let them take over. Had to step back and watch them work on her—bandages, pressure, a stretcher appearing from somewhere.
Some victories cost too much.
But she was alive. Mia was alive. And Todd was face-down in the dirt with deputies hauling him upright, blood dripping from his ruined face, finally getting what he deserved.
I’d take this victory.
I’d take it—and live with what it cost.
The aftermath came in pieces.
Radios crackling. Voices overlapping. Someone cutting the rope from Mia’s wrists. A paramedic in my face, hands on my arms, questions I didn’t answer. Maybe didn’t hear.
My jaw ached. My ribs burned when I breathed. Blood slick on my knuckles.
I stood there, chest rising too fast, waiting for my body to remember how to slow down.
Todd went past me in handcuffs. Or maybe I went past him. I caught flashes—his face ruined, one eye swelling shut, his mouth moving, shouting about rights, about lawyers, about everything except what he’d done.
None of it landed.
The ambulance did.
Red-and-white lights cutting through the trees. The back doors open. Paramedics lifting Riley onto the stretcher.
She wouldn’t go at first.
